Right, it’s all over. How can Robin Hood continue now? Good grief, Maid Marion is dead, sliced through by the wicked, but troubled, Gisborne! But I never thought you could have Robin Hood without Friar Tuck.
I still think he should be there, but political correctness rules at the Beeb. Why, even in Robin and Marion’s wedding scene she didn’t say ‘obey’. I thought that only went out in the last couple of decades. Revisionist history at its worst.
That aside, what a brilliant second series it has been.
Okay, the plots are simple – someone gets caught, they rescue the person and thwart the evil Sheriff of Nottingham, but the treatment inbetween was marvelous.
Keith Allen was brilliant as the Sheriff. His constant search for a tooth to replace a missing one saw him looting many a skull, and the scene where he’s lost in the forest, looks up and screams as the camera pans up from the canopy was an excellent take on the opening of I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.’
Jonas Armstrong as Robin was equally good.
I loved the way he was portrayed as some sort of modern delinquent, slouching about, unshaven, and even at times wearing a hoodie.
This slant to the contemporary is, I suppose, what the series was all about. Throughout was the backdrop of the Crusades, and in the final episode Robin even tells off King Richard for ignoring England whilst fighting a pointless war in the Middle East.
Mindst you, one wonders whether Robin Hood would even have returned if this contemporary theme could not have been aired. But regardless, it was here, and very well done, Beeb. Just a shame you can’t maintain this standard always.
© Anthony North, December 2007
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